Brutally Confused

Heritage Victoria has listed the Harold Holt Swimming Pool and despite a genuine interest in heritage preservation I cannot really get worked up about it. As every news article in the last two days has suggested, it was highly amusing that it was named after a Prime Minister thought drowned off Point Nepean but aside from that I had no personal attachment to it and couldn't really care if it was preserved or not.

What I can get worked up about is the fact that the heritage profession continues to make the same media blunders and continually misunderstand their own reasons for giving something heritage protection. I heard a Heritage Victoria representative on the radio defending the decision to put it on the register on the grounds of its brutalist architecture. Now that's all well and good, but when Jon Faine began to argue it was still too ugly to be preserved she began to argue that the pool was significant as a recreational place for many people. Which is it?

Something can be heritage listed on the basis of its architectural significance or its social significance, but if it has been listed purely for its architectural significance (as the media reports suggest) then you cannot use its social significance to justify it.

Often the reasons for heritage listing are slippery ones, based more upon emotion than hard facts and the result is a convoluted mixture of architectural, social and historical significance that ends up sounding more like Dennis Denuto's 'It's the vibe of the thing' than it does a logical justification for heritage listing.

Wondering how badly confused that justification can get? Check out the Statement of Significance for Waverley Park...